


The Sacrificial Wolf

by hello_imasalesman



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Quest: Blessed are the Peacemakers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22117681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hello_imasalesman/pseuds/hello_imasalesman
Summary: Kieran can only imagine what the O’Driscoll boys thought when they saw Arthur, pinned and mortal. Bleeding and very real, no longer a phantom that ghosted through the fireside stories between their ranks. A butterfly between the fingers of little boys, tearing the wings and legs off one by one. What those same boys thought when they found him escaped from his cage, his hands tightening around their necks, eyes alight.
Relationships: Kieran Duffy/Arthur Morgan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 120





	The Sacrificial Wolf

Kieran is a light sleeper. Always has been, and always will be, he’s pretty sure of it. Hard not to when you slept out in the open in the dirt, surrounded by people who were middling to outright hostile towards you.

He hears the calls from down the path, Lenny Summers shouting, “It’s Arthur!”, and over the loudness of his shout there is a tremor. Like the warble of a songbird, uncertain at the end. Kieran is already pushing himself up from the base of the tree, bleary-eyed.

Arthur’s draped over his Arabian like a burial shroud, held only by the toes of his boots in the stirrups. They cluster around his body, Mary-Beth and Karen, with Dutch cutting his way through camp. A swarm of hands, they pull him from his saddle, prone in their arms as he’s taken from his perch. Dutch bears the brunt of his weight, like a painting, like a tragedy.

“It was a set-up, Dutch,” Arthur moans, his voice melting into a wail as his body is jostled. It’s a cool night for the summer, on the precipice of an incoming storm, and the wind blows off the water, rustles the trees. It bears his pain, carries it even when he doesn’t have the breath to voice it. “It was a set-up—“

The wind moving over the lake steals the breath out of Kieran’s throat, wicks away the sweat and humidity and leaves him cold and shivering, standing alone on the edge of the pasture. The whole camp has come alight, people rousing from their bedrolls, leaving their tents. Kieran doesn’t want to make his worry known. Doesn’t want them all to know that he wants to run to Arthur.

But he has to go, he must. Needs to get close enough to see him. Kieran walks over under guise of pulling the horse away; his outstretched hands tremble, “C’mon, girl,” he hisses under his breath. He can barely hear himself over the noise; the camp seething alive, the buzzing in his ears, Arthur’s pained groans. 

The white Arabian blithely walks to Kieran as soon as she notices him; she’s been fed, she looks no worst for wear, her ears only pinning at the swarming chatter behind her. There is a red on her mane, a handprint smeared down her neck, so achingly stark against her coat. Is it Arthur’s blood? Is it someone else’s? She’s unaware of him trying to peer around her, to get a glimpse of Arthur as Grimshaw and Pearson help him to his feet, Swanson nervously stumbling behind.

Kieran’s not an O’Driscoll, and he’s told them all as much, but the real fear of meeting any of their gazes, of having them see him and suddenly realize, nearly paralyzes him. A guilt by association, even though he’s sworn off any and all association with them. That he may be blamed for cutting Arthur down himself, that he was a doublecrosser, even though he’s been here the entire time. Waiting and worrying while Dutch fought with Ms. O’Shea and Micah sauntered around camp.

He feels it in his throat. Tugging the Arabian along a little too harshly, his hands jerk. She braces, snorting as her hooves sink into the soft ground.

“C’mon,” Kieran wheedles, soft, panic rising as he turns to beg for her cooperation and she digs in even further, trying to ignore the people behind them. “C’mon, girl, please.”

She blinks her big eyes and her nostrils flare, but the Arabian blessedly, blessedly acquiesces, gives in for no reason Kieran can discern. Like a flight of fancy, just ambling towards Kieran. She doesn’t look back. Kieran tries not to, either.

Nobody notices him. Nobody notices. They never do—

Arthur Morgan sleeps for fifteen hours straight. Kieran counts them without a watch, by the passing of the sun and the ring of Pearson’s pottage bell. When Arthur wakes, it is in fits, delirious and fevered. The tarp is drawn over his tent, to keep out the heat of the sun and the flies, as Swanson had so insisted was the new fad, the way all of the doctors insisted nowadays. It does nothing to keep out the sound of his pained moans, the quiet shushing of Grimshaw as she tends to him sporadically throughout the day.

Kieran can only stand it for a day. At night, when Arthur is left alone, Kieran steals into his tent. Sits on the ground next to him, holding his hand, daubing his sweltering forehead with a wet rag, lake-cool.

He’s careful to only go when most everyone else has been sleeping; the only soul who sees him is Charles, and they have an uneasy truce between them, an understanding. Charles doesn’t seem to particularly like him, but he doesn’t hate him, either; he was the one, after all, all of those months ago that let Branwen into the barn during the worst of the storm, let her come in and nose against his drooping chin when Charles could have let her freeze to death outside.

It does not smell like death inside Arthur’s tent, but it’s not pleasant; the copper smell of blood, dirt, stagnant and heavy. Arthur sweats, and groans, and his breath wheezes from his lips like the wind through the trees.

Kieran’s throat closes, and he struggles to swallow around the lump.

“Arthur...”

Arthur’s lips part, but no sound comes out. Kieran presses his knuckles to his face, days old stubble scratching his fingers. Watches his eyes flutter open, unfocused, and then close.

He holds his wrist in his hand, rubs the pad of his thumb over the pulse point there, the line of blue that throbs under his touch. Arthur Morgan. Five thousand dollar bounty, harbinger of death, shotgun diplomacy.

Kieran wonders how the O’Driscoll boys will tell tales now that he’s escaped from them. If any had made it out alive from that post at all to tell the tales. He’s always been more ghost than person, a bogeyman to fear. Dutch’s face was far too heavily plastered on notice boards, more annoying than haunting. His hands were dirtied only from association by this point, nearly tall tales from the scant few O’Driscoll boys who were still alive from the time of Colm’s brother. Kieran’s sure he used to be involved more, but now he only sees Dutch in his tent, only occasionally leaving when he needs to make an appearance.

But Arthur? Blood streaming between his knuckles, wringing necks and cracking skulls? Arthur Morgan, who came upon O’Driscoll camps full of nine, ten men strong, and razed the tents and wagons singlehandedly with fire and fury?

Kieran can only imagine what they thought when they saw him, pinned and mortal. Bleeding and very real, no longer a phantom that ghosted through the fireside stories between their ranks. A butterfly between the fingers of little boys, tearing the wings and legs off one by one. What those same boys thought when they found him escaped from his cage, his hands tightening around their necks, eyes alight.

He knows how it feels, to be pursued by Arthur Morgan in a rage. The way the ice of the Grizzlies gripped his breath as he threw a fevered glance over his shoulder, and his eyes met Arthur’s. It feels strange to think of him that way, in that moment; it’s so foreign to the Arthur he knows now, the ones whose temple he strokes as he sweats and shivers.

After that night, Dutch avoids Arthur’s tent. Hosea goes into it once, and leaves looking so drawn and gray that Dutch actually leaves his self-imposed isolation to talk to him. They argue the way Dutch argues with Miss O’Shea. Kieran notices these things. Kieran’s good at blending into the background. Easy to be observant when you’re unobserved.

Kieran thinks on how the O’Driscolls are. The difference between their numbers has always stricken him the most. Kieran wonders which camp they had taken him to. If he knows any of the men who had tortured Arthur; if they used the same techniques he’s seen applied and been threatened with. If they hung him upside-down, the way one does with criminals, let the blood rush to his head until red in the face. If anyone had survived; if they have, Kieran wonders how Colm treated them, for letting Arthur go. If any of them are still alive.

They’re silly thoughts, but Kieran thinks them anyway; when he is with Arthur in the latest hours of the night, only him and the sound of someone singing, drunkenly, very far away. And sometimes, when Kieran’s working with the horses, and his work isn’t back-breakingly hard, he is left alone with them as well. It’s a dangerous position to be in, alone with one’s thoughts.

Sometimes, Kieran wonders what it would be like to be away from any O’Driscoll. Away from all the Van der Lindes, too, except one.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments always much loved and appreciated :) check out my other Kierthur fics and my tumblr (hello-imasalesman) as well


End file.
